David Laventhol, Publisher on Both Coasts, Dies at 81

April 9, 2015

by: Dennis Hevesi | New York Times

David A. Laventhol, a former publisher of theLos Angeles Times and Newsday who made a journalistically acclaimed but financially doomed attempt to break into the New York City newspaper market by starting New York Newsday in 1985, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 81. The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son, Peter, said.

In a 41-year career that took him from beat reporter at The St. Petersburg Times in Florida to assistant managing editor of the Washington Post and eventually to the top tiers of two more of the nation’s most respected newspapers, Laventhol brought to the daily editors’ conference a keen and unconventional sense of what could be a story.